University Row

I feel like I should be given an honorary college degree. I already passed close to the campuses of the University of Pittsburgh, Ohio State University (Columbus), University of Dayton, and today:

University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana
Illinois State University Bloomington
Bradley University Peoria
University of Iowa Iowa City

Anyway, I passed all the way through Illinois today (State #6) and into soggy Iowa (more about that later).

Illinois is full of a lot of fairly large cities with no skylines. They jump out at you as you cross the prairie. And, other than Chicago, they are under the radar. I was very impressed by the new, just-completed freeway renovation in Peoria. I have always wondered why, since we are already spending billions to do this stuff, why not add a few little touches to make they unique and attractive. Well, it appears someone decided to do that in Peoria. Black railings and street lights, unusual and attractive overpass supports, retro-style lights at the ends of the bridges, rock accents - again, I was very impressed. I stopped in Galesburg for lunch and a quick stop at the birthplace of Carl Sandburg.

Reached the Mississippi in the early afternoon and crossed at Quad Cities. Okay - today's geography question - name the four "quad cities". I have been through this area before, having visited the John Deere World HQ and Museum in Moline on one of my prior trips. One of the best company stores in the world. Rock Island is a still-active military installation that has been used as an armory for decades. It was one of the North's answers to Andersonville, housing thousands of Rebel soldiers during the Civil War.

Welcome to Iowa (State #7) - they have been having a little rain lately and evidence of it was everywhere. It was a beautiful day for me, but over the last week they have had a huge amount of rain and all the rivers are running at flood stage. The corn fields are soggy and covered with puddles. The farmers are not able to plant their corn, and since this is the ethanol year when record amounts of corn was going to be planted - what are they going to do now?

I was really getting tired as I drove into Iowa, so I stopped to wake myself up at the Herbert Hoover NHS (not a popular one, I don't think). It has his birth home (white house below) and his presidential library, and is located in West Branch, Iowa. After passing through Iowa City (University of Iowa), I drove through several of the Amana Colony towns. Very unique. These German colonies were founded in the 1800's and have been preserved (the street below is in Amana, Iowa) - a little too perfect and preserved I thought - kind of like living in Disneyland in a way. But worth the visit. Stopped for the night in Grinnell, Iowa.